How Carriers Fought: Carrier Operations in World War II

Introduction

A New Form of Naval Warfare

On November 13, 1921, the first purpose-built carrier was launched. It was the Japanese Hosho, which displaced 7,590 tons and had a design speed of 25 knots. The British would follow a year later with the launch of the Hermes, slightly larger and also capable of 25 knots.

Back in 1920, the USN had done the first experiments with take-off-and-landings cruisers with temporarily erected wooden decks but it was the British that during the war years did most of the development. One approach was seaplanes launched from catapults and then landing on water. Another was wheeled planes taking off and landing on flat decks built on converted ships. The first such functional carrier was the British Argus. It was the first to have the key characteristics of a flat deck, a hangar, and elevators to transport planes between the two decks.

The American carrier Langley, a converted collier, was not the first in ship design but was used to develop many of the methods that are still being used. It was the first to use a Landing Signals Officer (LSO) to help pilots with landing, and also the first to use arresting wires and to have planes parked forward and a barrier to protect them from a plane that had missed the arresting wires. This way of doing flight operations quadrupled the number of planes that could be carried. With that many planes came the need for faster flight operations which meant developing a new set of skills. Langley was a slow ship, however, unable to generate much wind over the deck, which made it less useful. It was also small, limiting the number of planes that could be carried.

After World War I, for various reasons, all major navies began converting battlecruisers to aircraft carriers. Battlecruisers had always been intended as the scouts of the fleet and it was now clear that by carrying aircraft they could do it much better. The guns were removed and replaced with a flight deck. The USN built the Lexington and Saratoga, the IJN built the Akagi and Kaga, while the RN built the Furious, Glorious, and Courageous. These were large, fast, and powerful ships, the first fleet carriers. They were larger than many battleships of the day, clearly indicating that the aircraft carrier had become something that mattered and that major navies were ready to invest large sums of money in them. They were still very much subordinate to the battleship, however, an adjunct to the battle fleet with the role limited to scouting and perhaps raiding.

The torpedo had become a major weapon. The problem with the torpedo was always how to get close enough to the enemy battleships. The torpedo carrying bomber presented a solution to that problem. The aircraft carrier now threatened the battleship.

In a fleet exercise in 1929, Saratoga was detached from the main fleet and launched a surprise attack against the Panama Canal. The attack was a success. It was now obvious that naval aviation was something to be reckoned with even at the strategic level.

Before Pearl Harbor, the Japanese pioneered the concept of using all the carriers together as one large force, intended for massive strikes with strategic implications. They became the first to have their carriers steaming together as one large formation.

A Very Technologically Complex Form of Warfare

This new type of naval warfare gave rise to a whole new set of problems involving a range of evolving technologies including navigation techniques suitable for aircraft, radio communications, landing on and taking off from a small flight deck, managing large numbers of aircraft on the flight deck and in the hangar. There were also the very considerable issues involved with formation flying and executing coordinated attacks. Torpedoes and torpedo bombing techniques were developed, as were dive bombing techniques, initially seen as a very radical form of attack. Simply finding the enemy was a major issue; it was revolutionized by the introduction of radar.

All this development went on for many years without any opportunity for testing within a battle situation. Every time a new and more powerful aircraft type was introduced, the goalposts moved.

When the war started, nobody really knew what would happen. Nobody really knew anything about carrier operations. There were lots of theories and opinions, sometimes strongly expressed, but at the end of the day, nobody could know for sure how it would all work out in actual combat.

Short but Interesting Lives

As aircraft engine development continued, striking power and range increased dramatically. As a carrier needed to be fast, both for its intended role as a scout and to facilitate flight operations, protection did not keep pace. Carriers evolved into eggshells armed with hammers, destined for short but interesting lives.

A battleship action was fairly simple: pound away at the enemy line until one side withdraws. The only complication was the desire to cross the other fleet’s T. It had been like that for centuries. A carrier battle was different. It was less of a slugging match and much more of a game of poker.

The enemy was never seen. Everything depended on the scouting report. These were often unreliable. Commanders often had to make their decisions based on fragmentary information. Then there was the considerable time it took from when a decision was made until something actually happened. Preparing and launching a strike took time. There was also a long time to wait until a strike actually reached its target, if any was found. A strike that successfully engaged the enemy carriers was almost certain to cause heavy damage, in many cases sinking most of them.

Adding all these elements together, we have a very deadly game indeed. Let us say the commanders involved occasionally had some very stressful days at the office.

Differently and Better?

This book starts out by examining the tools and building blocks of carrier operations. It then examines major carrier battles with a focus on how these tools were employed in those engagements.

We then have a good understanding of how carrier battles were fought. Then comes that nagging little question of what if…

What if they had done it differently in this or that battle? Would that have changed anything? Would the battles have turned out any differently? We can see that carrier operations changed in major ways during the war years. How much of that change was due to changing technology and how much was due to a better understanding of how to wage this new type of warfare? Answering these questions will provide us with a deeper understanding of carrier warfare.

The point about these what-ifs is not to speculate about a different outcome of the entire war. That is quite useless, we know what happened. The point is simply a better understanding of the dynamics.

One such topic is concentration versus dispersion. A prime example is the battle of Midway and the way the Japanese divided their forces while the Americans concentrated theirs. Inside the USN there was also intense debate on whether carriers should steam together for mutual protection or separately, to not have all the eggs in one basket. A poker player can play loose or tight—it depends on the chip count.

Another topic is the best balance between fighters and bombers. The combatants started the war with only about 20 percent fighters. The US ended the war with more like 80 percent while the Japanese stayed largely the same. Why?

An old and at times rather heated debate concerns whether or not armored flight decks were worth the cost in other areas like size of air group. The answer was quite unexpected for the author.

One of standard truths when writing about naval warfare of World War II is that the carrier had superseded the battleship. Is that really true or was it perhaps more complicated than that? To answer these questions I have used a model for combat between carriers. This combat model is based on the historical battles, on actual hit percentages and losses. All major carrier battles are therefore described, with a focus on the flow of flight operations and on the number of hits and losses. How searches were made is described, how many planes were used, and the range and coverage of the search. Strikes are detailed, how many planes were launched, how many hits were scored and losses suffered.

With the understanding gained from answering these questions, we can then describe and explain how carrier operations evolved during the war. Finally, we can then put this evolution in the context of the requirements and goals of the major navies and of their overall conduct of the war.

This book then has a certain flow to it. It starts with the tools, then how these tools were used in the battles, and then how well these tools were used. Having done that, this book will examine what happened and why in carrier battles, in order to answer the question how?

PART I

Carrier Operations

CHAPTER 1

Navigation and Communication

Life in the Cockpit

Life in the cockpit of a World War II single-engine carrier-borne aircraft was most of all noisy. That big engine only a few feet away created a loud drone. Radial engines have a rather deep, slightly muffled roar to them, while inline engines have a sharper and more aggressive sound that tends to be more tiring. Those leather helmets were there for a reason. The earphones provided as part of the helmet assisted in using the radio, despite the noise. The microphone was a boom or throat microphone or integrated into the oxygen mask. Radio operators typically had a handheld microphone.

Cockpits were generally roomy. Radial engines, common on carrier aircraft, have a relatively large frontal area which makes it easier to fit more spacious cockpits. Fighters with inline engines, like the Spitfire or the Bf 109, tended to have cockpits that were much more cramped.

Cold temperature at altitude was generally not a problem for the pilot; warmth was provided by the closeness of the engine. For the rear gunner, or anyone sitting in an open cockpit, it was a different matter. Depending on altitude and climate it could be very cold. Sitting on the deck in tropical waters, waiting for take off, the breeze over the flight deck provided some cooling.

Cockpits were not pressurized. Oxygen masks had to be used above 12,000–14,000 feet. The oxygen tank was mounted in a fixed position, as the crew sat in their seats and did not move around. The prewar continuous flow type masks allowed operation up to 20,000–25,000 feet but had to be adjusted as the altitude changed and tended to waste oxygen. The more sophisticated demand-type masks allowed operation up to about 40,000 feet. For the latter type, a leak-proof fit for the mask was essential. The wearer had to be freshly shaven but might have a mustache. The fit around the nose was the most difficult part, as human noses vary greatly in shape and size. To get a good fit, the mask tended to put considerable pressure around the nose which could rub it raw and make the mask quite painful to wear. If high-g maneuvers were expected, likely exacerbated by the pilot sweating heavily, the mask had to very tightly secured indeed. Oxygen starvation (hypoxia) is a particularly insidious condition, as the first symptom is often a sense euphoria and not caring about what is happening. It then continues with disorientation, loss of consciousness, and death. Many pilots and aircrew were killed by a badly adjusted or leaking mask or any other problem with the oxygen supply. It was not unusual to see a plane drop out of the sky for no apparent reason. When using oxygen, it was common for aircrew to periodically check on each other. Cruising altitude was usually at around 12,000 feet to save on the limited oxygen available, as well as to avoid the discomfort and dangers of using oxygen. Dive bombers liked to climb to about 20,000 feet to get above the defenders before the attack and CAP had to be prepared to meet them at that altitude. Cockpits of modern fighters are only weakly pressurized and issues with the oxygen supply are a persistent and major danger.

No food or beverage was generally brought on missions despite these lasting upwards of 4–5 hours. Several battle accounts mention that the crews were quite hungry and thirsty after a mission and that the lack of food indeed had an effect on pilot endurance. As an LSO said to a pilot after he finally managed to land after five unsuccessful attempts: You had to land here son, this is where the food is.

Aircrew often had some emergency ration with them to be used if shot down. This could take the form of stuffing something in pockets or somewhere in the plane. If accessible, it could be dipped into on a long mission. The heavy bombers of the bombing campaigns carried food and (hot) beverages for the crews but carrier aircraft did not, at least not on combat missions. Training missions were more relaxed and food and water was sometimes brought on long flights.

Smoking was generally not permitted in the cockpit but it went on anyway from time to time. Given how common smoking was at the time, this was unavoidable. Most soldiers and sailors smoked, the same in all militaries. Cigarettes were used as a way to relax from the stress of combat and some pilots were inveterate smokers. Some types of heavy bombers had lighters and ashtrays in the cockpit but carrier-borne aircraft generally did not have such amenities. On board a carrier, smoking was generally allowed but was restricted on flight and hangar decks or where gasoline was handled, for obvious reasons. Smoking was facilitated and encouraged by the military, with active support from the tobacco industry, particularly on the Allied side. Modern-day statisticians have calculated that the increase in smoking habits during World War II, due to so many men being in the military, cost more man-years of life lost than did combat.

A Hellcat in the elevator well onboard USS Monterey. No smoking was allowed inside the hangar (at least the sign says so on this carrier; in practice it varied).

A relief tube was fitted for each crew in case there was a need to urinate. The flight suit zipper went far down but there was still a fair amount of digging out and then careful aiming to be done for successful completion of the task, often while busy keeping station in a formation. The relief tube was quite unpopular, if nothing else because it tended to freeze and become blocked at cruising altitude (air temperature goes down about 3°C per 1,000 feet of altitude). Adult diapers were an alternative but do not appear to have been used by carrier pilots. Female pilots had trouble using the relief tube. They used diapers instead, for example while doing long delivery flights of Hellcats from where they were manufactured in Bethpage, New York, to the West Coast. Pilots sometimes simply landed with a damp or even smelly flight suit. Heavy bombers generally used a chemical toilet, a bucket with a lid, or a cardboard box. Here the crew had room to move about but then a co-pilot was required and, if at altitude, portable oxygen bottles. To avoid dealing with these problems, urinating before a mission was standard. Pilots often resorted to not drinking any liquids before a mission (tactical dehydration). This was not a good solution as dehydration affected performance, sometimes as much as being intoxicated, something which was not really understood at the time.

Amphetamine pills were widely available among all major combatants during World War II. They increase wakefulness for an additional 2–10 hours beyond what could be considered typical endurance. In those days it did not have the connotation of drug addiction it has today. The Germans used them during the campaigns against Poland and France but quickly became aware of how they impaired judgment and more or less stopped using them. Side effects included aggressiveness, irritability, anxiety, paranoia, hallucinations, and general confusion. After use, it would take a day or two to return to normal. Allied heavy-bomber crews were routinely issued with amphetamines to stay alert on long missions, as were crews of long-distance naval patrol planes. The common brand name was Benzedrine or Bennies. Carrier crews with their relatively short missions of up to 4–5 hour did not use these pills much at all. Still, there are reports of amphetamine pills having been taken by US pilots before landing back on the carrier. Japanese carrier pilots have also been described as taking vitamin pills to stay alert.

G-suits were experimented with from 1943 and onwards. The British used a system with water-filled bladders around the legs which would fill automatically as the g-suits were applied. Americans used a suit that would be filled with compressed air. Both systems worked as advertised; pilots could now handle and additional 1– 1.5 g. Fighter pilots could be more aggressive in turns and had an advantage in combat. Early suits were uncomfortable to wear for extended periods though. G-suits could have been used by dive-bomber pilots during the pull-out but that appears to not have been done. The Ju-87 had a different solution to this: it had an autopilot that handled the pull-out if the pilot blacked out.

Formation flying was an essential part of combat. Much time was spent training on it. Flying in a formation, the pilot had to constantly keep the correct position. On the way to and from the target area, the formation was loosened up to reduce the workload on the pilots. Approaching the target area the formation was tightened up and required more attention.

Flying over vast stretches of open water with nowhere to land put a constant psychological pressure on navigation and on conserving fuel. There was also the constant worry about some kind of engine problem. Little confidence was placed on radios and various electronic navigation aids; both were prone to breakdowns and there had not always been time for proper training. Being a radio operator was not only about operating the radio, how to use it correctly, and to understand its limitations; it was also about giving the radio the tender loving care it needed to stay functioning well (like keeping it properly tuned, fixing a loose connection, or coaxing along a recalcitrant vacuum tube somewhere).

Combat missions were often long and boring, followed by a few minutes of sheer terror. The danger of AA fire was something one could not do much about—who got killed and who survived was just a matter of luck. Being powerless in that regard was something that just had to be accepted. Toward the end of the war missions consisted mostly of a daily grind of ground support with the ever-present danger from AA taking a psychological toll.

Search missions were better appreciated. There was more of a sense of serenity and peace, more time to enjoy the beauty of flying, watching the clouds and the slowly changing weather conditions.

Carriers were free of mosquitoes and sundry other nasty critters, as well as of most tropical diseases. Pilots of all navies preferred carrier duty to being stationed on a tropical island.

Bailing Out and Ditching

All pilots and aircrew had a parachute. They spent their time in the cockpit sitting on it. It was not a very comfortable seat—a parachute is a parachute and not a wonder of ergonomics.

Bailing out required sufficient altitude to give the parachute time to open. It meant opening the canopy, usually by sliding it backwards—a simple thing to do in normal circumstance but with the plane shot up and perhaps the crew member being injured himself, it could easily become a major operation. Sometimes it was simply not possible to get out. Carrier combat was often at low level, so using a parachute was not always an option.

Bailing out at a high altitude meant disconnecting from the oxygen supply. The pilot then had to do a free fall and not pull the rip cord until he had reached an altitude where there was enough oxygen in the air. The time for the free fall was short enough so that hypoxia would not cause the pilot to lose consciousness.

Ditching was dangerous in planes with liquid-cooled inline engines. The problem was the air scoop for the cooling radiator, typically placed on the belly somewhere. It would scoop water, forcing the plane to a very rapid stop, often knocking the pilot unconscious as well as flipping the plane over. Scooping water, it would also make the plane sink very fast. The very short time to get out forced the pilot to unbuckle himself before the ditching, further increasing the risk of being knocked unconscious. The recommended procedure was therefore to dip one of the wings and as it touched the water the plane would cartwheel to a stop with less scooping of water. Cartwheeling is obviously not a controlled procedure and ditching with an inline engine was often fatal. This was one more reason why radial engines were almost always used for carrier-based aircraft. With a radial engine, ditching was likely a survivable event. Most of the danger came from being knocked unconscious and/or trapped and unable to get out of the sinking plane. A fixed landing gear does not seem to have precluded ditching; there are several accounts of Val dive bombers ditching and the aircrew surviving to be picked up.

The Zero was different in that pilots in many situations elected not to wear the parachute harness, using the parachute only as a seat cushion. The reason for this was that the parachute harness restricted movement in the cockpit. Another reason was that bailing out in combat would often mean capture, at least in wartime, something that was not really an option for pilots. On the other hand, the Zero had excellent ditching characteristics, including sealed flotation compartments in the wings and a flotation bag inside the rear fuselage that could be inflated by the pilot. Early war USN types like the Wildcat, Dauntless, and Devastator also had flotation gear but soon had them removed. In the case of the Devastator, the express purpose was that the plane would indeed sink, quickly and reliably, taking the top-secret Norden bomb sight with it (and presumably the aircrew as well). In the case of the Wildcat it was due to reliability problems—the large inflatable bags in the wings had a habit of inflating at inopportune moments which lead to some fatal accidents. The RN did not use flotation gear in their planes and the Martlets had them removed.

Pilots did not necessarily have the shoulder harnesses seen today. In the early days of the war, many planes only had a simple two-point seatbelt. Shoulder harnesses were added as pilots kept smashing their foreheads against the gun sight during ditching or crash landing. Harnesses were kept loose as required to operate the gun or bomb sight and any plotting board used.

Japanese fighter pilots, both army and navy, had a habit of shooting enemy aircrew hanging in a parachute. The main defense against this was to not pull the rip cord until at fairly low altitude. Having landed in water, it was usually best not to inflate the life jacket or life raft until after the fight was over.

Search and Rescue

All pilots and aircrew wore lifejackets. USN and RN used inflatable ones commonly nicknamed Mae Wests. Inflation was with a CO2 cartridge or manually. Dye markers were often included; releasing the dye into water would create a brightly colored patch on the ocean, usually fluorescent yellow-green (using the Cy3 cyanine dye). The patch would last for half an hour and was the most effective way to get spotted from the air. A small bobbing head in the ocean is very hard to spot from even a short distance. Dye markers are still in use today. IJN used bulkier lifejackets made of kapok, a vegetable material related to cotton that is very buoyant and resistant to water but also flammable. These did not have to be inflated. IJN life jackets were khaki or dark green while USN and RN were yellow, or more exactly, a yellowish khaki.

Most planes were equipped with a liferaft for the crew, usually accessed through a hatch on the outside, to be pulled out and inflated after ditching. This liferaft had various survival equipment within it, like a flare gun, some emergency rations, and a small amount of water (but no towel). Later in the war, a small one-man liferaft was often included with each parachute so that a liferaft was available after bailing out as well as after having ditched.

Both the USN and the RN put great emphasis on recovering lost pilots. Records were kept of where comrades had bailed out or ditched and this was communicated to the search and rescue resources available. Primary tools of rescue were flying boats, floatplanes, submarines, and destroyers.

Japanese pilots saw all this and were quite envious of how much effort the Americans put into rescuing downed airmen. They were in a different situation as it was felt that the resources required were better employed elsewhere. This was probably correct from a strictly military point of view. Many planes did not have life rafts and if they had, rescue was still unlikely. The tendency of Japanese pilots to crash themselves into enemy ships, instead of hoping for a rescue, then becomes understandable. Pilots were simply expected to make whatever sacrifice was required of them, whether they liked it or not.

Capture

IJN aircrew abhorred being captured, preferring to kill themselves instead, often by crashing into enemy ships. If they somehow survived to be captured, they were deemed to have failed in a most dishonorable way. Having nothing left to lose, they would now often acquiesce to their captor’s demands and quite readily so. To facilitate this psychological defection, the few that were captured were kept isolated from each other until interrogations were completed.

Captured USN aircrew were routinely tortured and executed by the Japanese. It was accepted that they would not withstand torture. While in a combat zone, they were told as little as possible.

Airborne Navigation

Navigation was by dead reckoning (DR) using a magnetic compass, air-speed indicator, and a watch. This basic DR was refined with estimates for wind drift, starting with the wind that was observed at the carrier. Careful observation was also made of weather patterns and possible changes in wind direction and strength. Wind drift could be gauged from the direction and length of waves but flying above the clouds the waves could not be observed. Accurate navigation depended also on being a good meteorologist. Weather forecasts of the day were often unreliable and of little help.

The DR plot was accurate to within about 5–10 percent. With a combat radius of 250 miles we then have an uncertainty of up to 20–50 miles. During a mission lasting 4 hours, the fleet would have typically moved around 50–100 miles, so before the flight, pilots were briefed on expected movements by the carrier (which implied limits on the freedom of movement of the carrier until the planes had been recovered). Longer strike ranges were avoided, not only for fuel and endurance reasons but also for navigational reasons.

Portable plotting boards (sometimes called the chartboard) were used by the navigators of all navies. The board typically contained navigational charts with notes on positions, times, and headings written in pencil. USN pilots used a special type of plotting board that integrated the circular slide rule functionality, similar to the well-known Dalton E-6B flight computer, streamlining much of the plotting work. The board also had diagrams to help with assessing wind speed from wave length. The board was stored either as a drawer on the main instrument panel in front of the pilot or tucked away by the side of the seat. RN navigators used a common plotting board coupled with a separate Mk III Navigational Computor, later upgraded to the Mk IV version which was very similar to the E-6B. The E-6B was invented in the late 1930s by USN Lt. Philip Dalton, later killed while serving as an instructor pilot in another one of those all too common training accidents.

VT-13 pilots on USS Franklin with their plotting boards getting ready for a mission, October 24, 1944. The plotting boards are plugged into the instrument panel like a kitchen drawer. Note dye markers carried on life jackets.

The compass was normally of the fluxgate type with a basic card compass as backup. The fluxgate sensor was placed in a magnetically quiet part of the aircraft, that is away from the engine and electrical equipment (aluminum is not magnetic). Repeaters were placed on the instrument panel, both for pilot and navigator. Neither type of compass works during combat maneuvers—the aircraft had to be flying level. Gyroscopes are not affected by maneuvers but, as it drifted, it needed periodic manual alignment with the compass. The most sophisticated solution was a gyroscope with automatic alignment to a fluxgate compass. True gyro compasses were not used on aircraft, being much too heavy and expensive. They were used extensively on ships, however. They use the earth’s rotation and not its magnetic field and are therefore not affected by the presence of large masses of steel.

It was the responsibility of the pilot to fly the exact compass course that he was supposed to. This required concentration. The further away from the carrier, the more the pilot felt the pressure to be accurate in his flying.

Navigation by sextant and chronograph was possible but required a dedicated navigator. The sextant was of the bubble type with an artificial horizon. Fix accuracy was rather poor at about 10–20 miles. Obviously a clear sky was needed but then so did combat operations. Ships with their better sextants, stable decks and true horizons usually navigated with an accuracy of 2–5 miles. Taking the height of the sun using a sextant will only yield a line, not a position. As the sun moves across the sky, a second line can be obtained that can then be compared with the first by transposing it with DR. Getting a true position fix is therefore something that is only possible for flights lasting longer than a few hours and depended on good DR. At night, the stars can be used, each providing a line of position and true fixes can be obtained directly.

Navigators of Japanese naval aviation used the Bygrave tubular slide rule for sight reduction. The Bygrave was invented in 1920 by RAF Captain L. G. Bygrave. A modified version of the original Bygrave was used by the German U-boats. It solved the mathematical equations directly but was replaced by books with printed sight reduction tables, a faster and easier solution, when these became available before and during the war.

Navigation could be done by the pilot if needed, but was usually better and more accurately done by a dedicated navigator. The pilot could be busy not only with basic flying but also with keeping position within the formation. As it could be difficult for a single-seat fighter pilot to also do navigation, he tended to just tag along with the bombers, at least early in the war.

The RN frequently operated in low-visibility conditions and, before electronic navigation aids had been developed, tended to operate two-seat fighters for this reason, for example the Fulmar. Despite the cost in performance, being able to reliably find one’s way back to the carrier after a mission was seen as essential.

The following is a rather vivid description of life as an observer/navigator on board a Swordfish torpedo bomber with the added complexity of having an open cockpit (from the book Achtung! Swordfish! by Stanley Brand):

It was indeed a miracle that an observer could concentrate on the difficult task of keeping track of our whereabouts with a chart and chart board balanced on his knee, without a table for his instruments, needing pencils, ruler, rubber, dividers, compasses, records of deviations, variations, courses and times flown, wind speeds and direction and a calculator for drift and distance flown. Gloved hands and sometimes numb fingers made it difficult to hold these awkward things and if they were dropped Sod’s Law decreed that they would rest just out of reach, with movement restricted in the confines of the cockpit and by the many layers